Lewis and Clark Trail History

The Old Celilo Falls

Robert Gray was an American merchant sea-captain and explorer. In 1790 he explored the Pacific Northwest Coast, and became the first American to circumnavigate the globe, on a ship named Columbia. On a return voyage to the Pacific Northwest Coast in 1792 he entered and named the Columbia River. From the fixing of the coordinates of this position, the width of the continent was known for the first time.

When Meriwether Lewis reached the Continental Divide in August of 1805, he reasoned that there would be many falls and rapids on the journey downstream, given his altitude and the remaining distance westward to the Pacific coast.

On October 23, 1805, the Corps of Discovery came to a particularly spectacular but dangerous stretch of the Columbia. This series of cascades and rapids was known collectively as The Narrows or The Dalles, with the first (and greatest) one being the Celilo Falls, near the spot where the Deschutes River flows into the Columbia from the south.

For many generations, native peoples gathered here to fish and exchange goods. They built wooden platforms extending over the water and caught salmon with nets and spears as fish swimming upstream jumped over the falls. Here's a remarkable film shot by the Army Corps of Engineers (in color) showing Native American fishermen at the Celilo Falls.

These falls no longer exist, as they were inundated when the Dalles Dam was constructed in 1957.